I just recently picked up a 08 P71 at an auction for a pretty good price. 84,000 on the clock and only very minor cosmetic issues. I've had P71s in the past with a few holes here and there and they usually have a rubber plug installed... well this car literally has 8 holes on the roof and a 9th hole in the center of the trunk lid. I have no idea why they needed to drill so many holes in this thing! The roof looks like swiss cheese. Luckily, they are all filled with rubber plugs and caulk underneath. With these old cop cars, I normally overlook a few holes, but this is excessive. And with less than 100K on it, I'd rather keep this one as nice as possible since it's a notch or two above your typical auction level "throw away" cop car. I'd like to patch the holes and make the top of the car look somewhat decent. I'm not worried about factory paint matching or anything fancy, but at the same time, I'd like for it to look semi-professional at best. I'm looking for some expert opinions on filling in holes and please gear the answers for a body work novice. Most of the holes were for NMO antenna mounts and they're about the size of a half dollar. Edit: I'm not a welder, nor do I have access to a welder.
Personally I'd make friends with a welder, or purchase a cheap one or rent one if possible. Plug and weld away. That's how we did mine. You don't need a pro welder, my dad's welding isn't pretty haha. The better the weld the less body work though. The only pic I could find that even shows the delete.
The only welding equipment I have is this dinosaur that was a souvenir left behind at my warehouse along with some masks. I know nothing about it...
for holes that size you could get away with a filler/patch. They sell small kits at vatozone. You stick the mesh on from the back and then a little filler on each side, some sanding and your done. for the number of kits you need not sure how you can get more of the mesh material but I am willing to bet it isn't too hard to find a small square of it somewhere.
Okay. This is what I was hoping to hear. ^ I've been watching some tutorials on using the mesh and filler that you're talking about. Some people say it will be fine, others claim it's not worth a shit. I'd rather go this route instead of fiddling with a welder and putting metal patches in. If it were a show car, or one of the mustangs, it would be a different story. In this case, I just want to patch the holes so it looks decent, but at the same time, I don't want to run the risk of having the filler fall out. The goal here is to start using the 08 P71 as my DD next year and eventually pass the 04 P71 off to my wife to replace her escort. Do you think I'd have to remove the headliner to place the mesh on the underside of the holes? Or can you just cut a piece and push it through from the top?
The more mesh you have in contact with the metal the better it all holds so you will need access to the back. I would probably opt for a fiberglass reinforced putty myself its a little harder to mix/sand but stronger as well. get a good quality filler, make sure you get all the rust/crap out and it will be fine. No its no the way it should be done but if its done right it will last.
Get washer roughly the size of the hole. Weld washer in. Weld hole in middle of washer closed. Grind flat. Apply filler. Sand flat. Probably gonna need to apply another coat of filler. Sand. Prime. Sand. Probably prime and sand once or twice more. Easiest way of going about it in my view Sent from bored/stroked iPhone 6 Plus
if you have a welder and know how to use it I agree. If the holes are small enough you can always run a tap through them and then cut part of a bolt off and put that in the middle either with some putty or epoxy, weld if you can.
Myself I would epoxy the holes then spray the whole roof flat or satin black, would be good enough to live with yet easy to do in one day
Welding is out of the question because I'm not familiar with welding, nor do I know anybody around here that can help me with it. I'm not taking it to a body shop either because, let's face it, it's not worth dumping half of what I paid for the car back into it to patch up a few holes on the roof. (If it were one of my mustangs, it would be a different story.) Somebody else suggested cutting out patches of sheet metal and putting them under the holes from the inside with a high quality panel adhesive. Then bondo on top. Sand, prime, paint. I figured that would be strong enough for what I need, but also cheep enough to justify doing on a $3100 car.
with that you'll probably be happier getting a piece of finish cloth fiber glass and patching it to the roof (from inside) and then back filling the holes from the top. Pushing bondo or whatever filler down into the holes, to contact the glass. sand smooth and paint.
Since you don't weld you could try a construction adhesive. Drop a round head bolt through the top and trim from inside. Grind down the head flush outside and bondo sand paint. I think the construction adhesive would hold the bolt head in.
In the process of sanding down and disassembling my friends jetta for paint. We are shaving some things in the process. Antenna on the roof and side markers on the quart panels. We take a piece of thin metal, like the thickness they use on gutters, cut it tobe slightly bigger, epoxy it from underneath, come back after it sets with the bondo and smooth it out. Kind of a cheap way out but it holds up and works. Also you just need to know how to mix bondo and hardener and you can do it lol.
^ I'm probably going to do something along these lines. At least with the roof, the patches would be hidden behind the headliner and nobody would know. I'll probably end up swapping the trunk lids from the 04 to the 08 since the 04 doesn't have any holes at all and it's in nice shape. Thanks for all the suggestions and insight guys.
